The Barrier
by mnfowler
Summary: Lt. Piri Reyes is captured by alien conquerors who don't care whether he lives or dies so long as they can wrest from his mind the codes and password that will allow them to penetrate his solar system and conquer Earth.
1. Chapter 1

Captain Mbiti contemplated the vial of poison he kept by his console. An hour ago, an enemy attack on his carrier had crippled her right away. Earth Carrier Washington was ambushed while on a solo mission to a new solar system. A fleet of more than forty ships, each twice the size of the Washington, appeared out of nowhere, actually popping into view from behind the system's two largest planets. Their advanced technology was instantly apparent in both their speed and firepower.

An attempt to hail them went unanswered. They never even opened a channel to hear Mbiti's appeal. They only seemed interested in his unconditional surrender, and, to persuade him, they did not just fire a particle cannon across his bow, they took a precision shot at his ship-wide communications plexus, preventing him from sending a signal back to Earth, hobbling communication with his crew, and especially cutting off contact with the pilots who had been scouting the system away from the ship at the time of the attack.

Mbiti and his men fought as long as they could, using the emergency generators on each deck and a dual magnetic/pneumatic tube system by which Mbiti was able to send hastily written orders to each deck, telling combat stations to fire at will and directing sig-ops to begin destroying all codes and passwords. He also warned all decks that he had initiated the self-destruct protocol. This had meant that the ship was set to explode in fifty-five minutes and that—should the self-destruct procedure be interrupted or terminated—every crewman should commit suicide rather than be captured.

Mbiti did not know who these aliens were or what their intentions might be, but he had to assume the worst. If they were planning to invade Earth, they would need to penetrate the Solar System Defense Network, meaning they would need to bypass four concentric interplanetary force fields. Even though their technology generally appeared to be more advanced, these aliens were going to find the SSDN a formidable obstacle. They could not attack directly without heavy losses. Blasting through one layer of defense would mean facing stiffer resistance at the next one. A fully alarmed solar system, throwing everything it had at the invaders, would wear down even an armada of hundreds of enemy ships.

No, Earth's defense strategists knew that the SSDN could only be penetrated by a Trojan horse such as an enemy ship disguised as a friendly one. For this reason, even the Washington, if it were to return home, would have to give a different numeric code to each defense sphere and, at last, the verbal password. Even an apparently friendly ship would be destroyed if it could not provide the correct codes and password. Additionally, the SSDN had prevented communication signals from escaping the solar system for more than 250 years, so even if these aliens had been collecting signal intelligence since the twentieth century—plotting and biding their time until they had the technology to launch an invasion—their information would by now be out of date.

Under no circumstances could the aliens be allowed to take the Washington or anyone aboard her, Mbiti thought, especially not the captain or anyone else who knew all of the codes. He rose from his chair and went to look out his porthole at the enemy fleet. Since electronics were down, cameras were not working, and physical windows like this were the only way to see out. He wrinkled his brow when he saw his fighter craft, like so many little red-glowing gnats, still pestering the great white lead ship of the enemy fleet. He saw one after the other blink out as each was hit by an alien particle weapon. Not only were their otherwise heroic actions futile, but the fighter craft that were not destroyed might actually endanger Earth precisely because they each had the codes for the three outer spheres programmed into their transponders. Each of them could make a serviceable Trojan horse, at least part of the way through the SSDN barriers.

Some of the pilots, including his personal friend, Lt. Piri Reyes, kept in their heads both the numeric code needed to enter the final, Martian sphere and the verbal pass code that would allow safe passage after that point. Mbiti hated the thought of his friend falling into enemy hands, but he hated more the thought of his captors drawing from Reyes the keys to penetrating Earth's defenses. Mbiti and Reyes had been trained not only to withstand physical torture but, also, to fight mind-probes, which had become very effective on Earth; he could only imagine how much more effective these aliens might be at reaching into someone's mind and extracting the most sensitive secrets.

He turned away from the battle scene and reclined on his couch. He examined the vial once more and then drank. It was done. Now it would take about three minutes for his central nervous system to shut down. More than likely, the Washington would be gone before that. He checked the clock. Two minutes and twelve seconds left to self-destruct.

Lt. Piri Reyes saw yet another comrade's fighter craft blink out of existence as a particle cannon blasted it into its constituent atoms. His wrap-around screens, connected to six external cameras, allowed a complete view of space around him. Reyes had seen one comrade after another die. Now another to his aft burst and disappeared.

His fighter squadron's peppering of the upper deck of the enemy vessel with their mini-cannons had proven futile. What Reyes had to do was hit the big plasma cannon on the underside of the ship. The cannon that was spewing a white-hot beam toward those of his remaining wing members who were trying to escape and warn Earth.

He looked at his own mother ship and despaired at her plight. She was dark and only sporadically firing back. Many crewmen had probably already taken their suicide pills. His friend, Captain Mbiti, had no doubt taken his own life with that vial of clear liquid he kept in his quarters. Several dozen enemy fighter craft were speeding toward her now, as if they did not care that the Washington might blow at any moment, probably before they could reach her. Or perhaps the enemy was so much more advanced that they had some way of disarming the self-destruct program.

It was Reyes' time to go, too, but he would do as much damage as he could on his way out. He dodged small particle cannon fire as he made an arc over the top deck of the enemy ship and rode down her starboard side and then swung, upside-down in relation to the alien ship—though this made no practical difference in space—and headed straight toward the rounded gun turret.

He thought about the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II who desperately crashed into American ships in the futile hope of preventing their country's inevitable defeat. He knew that even if he destroyed this one gun, the aliens would, at most, be forced to take a day to install a new one. But desperation was all he had left.

Suddenly, he felt a force throw him, from his perspective, upward and forward against his restraints. Then he was forced down but still forward. His craft was being yanked backward in a reverse arc. His cameras told him that he was being sucked into a circular aperture well aft of the gun turret he had been trying to crash into.

At first, Reyes only knew that his craft was inside a space dominated by bright light. He had lost all power, could not see anything on his monitor screens and could not self-destruct. His sensors could no longer tell him much about his environment except that there was only slightly less oxygen and a slightly higher temperature outside his craft as compared to its interior. The light shone bright through the small porthole that was now his only window to the outside. He raised an arm to shield his eyes, but soon discovered that each of his arms hurt so much that he could raise neither of them far enough. He ached all over and was sure he had whiplash in his neck and shoulders. He knew he would be unable to resist capture now. There was no use in fighting his physical fate. He waited.

It was child's play for them to open the hatch. As he lay helpless in his flight chair, they stood around his craft, which seemed to be in some kind of great cargo bay that was bathed in so much light he could not determine the limits its walls let alone tell whether there was any such thing as a corner where a wall met another wall, or a floor or ceiling.

The appearance of the aliens was a shock. The impression they gave was of man-size praying mantises but with uncanny, almost human faces and long, no doubt very efficient fingers. And they each had two pairs of arms. Four opposable thumbs. Their legs bent back and they seemed to bob slightly as if, at any moment they might jump like kangaroos. What surprised him most was that he was not frightened by their appearance. Something about them made him want to laugh. It was not that they were absurd to him. On the contrary, they were actually elegant in design. He found himself even admiring that. What made him laugh was the recognition that evolution had not gone so differently on their planet as it had on his. For one thing, the air in the room suggested that they thrived on a similar mix of gases on their world. It seemed a bit thin, but it still contained oxygen and he was getting just enough of it. And, yes, there was the difference that on his own planet an intelligent species of primate had come to dominate, while on theirs insects had developed intelligence, but he noted that this meant that both planets had insects. Perhaps their planet had apes, too. If so, the novelty of his appearance to them would wear off soon enough.

They must have drawn the same conclusion, for they only stared at him for a split second before going into action. Reyes felt a twinge of panic when two of them produced blades—one for each set of their arms for a total of four blades—but they only used these to cut him out of his harness. They were rough, but he believed they were not intentionally sadistic as they pulled him out and placed him on a kind of floating gurney, which they then guided out of the bay and down a corridor. One of the aliens touched him with a cold object, and he felt a rush through his skin, and then descended into unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

When Reyes came to, he was naked and strapped down on a soft white pallet. It was warm and he was not uncomfortable. He realized that he was still groggy from whatever drug they had given him.

"Ah, you have come back to us," said a voice that oscillated from a deep rattle to a high pitched squeak. It gave Reyes a chill, because he knew that it was someone speaking English, but someone who was no native speaker of either English or any other human language.

Reyes tried to raise his head to see who had addressed him, but the pain that shot through his strained neck muscles persuaded him to lay his head back down.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said the voice, and then the mantis-like alien came into view at the side of his bed. "You can call me Ushzhur, although that is only an approximation of my name. Besides, there is little need for you to call me anything since I am the only Gourvyn you will ever see here. You, however, I know to be Lt. Piri Reyes, and you are our prisoner."

Reyes had to think a while before he replied. "You state the obvious, Mr. Oosh-zer."

"Yoosh-zh-yur," Ushzhur corrected him, putting emphasis on the "zh" sound and the elongated "u." "It doesn't matter," he continued. "You have been out—as you say—for a long time." He emphasized the word "out" as if that colloquial metaphor had never made sense to him. "It seems that drugs we you use on ourselves have similar effects on you, only stronger."

"You speak English awfully well," said Reyes. He was killing time, studying the room. He tried to focus on the ceiling. It was entirely blank as were the walls and floor. He could see no doorway from the room at all.

"Thank you," said Ushzhur, and his voice rose to a particularly high squeak. "Your planet's signals are hidden from us today, but centuries ago you broadcast everything so that by the time we arrived in this neighborhood we had gathered a great deal of information about you. There are several of us who speak human languages. I chose English because it is so dominant. I assumed that since you are a pilot, you would have been required to learn English."

"That was once a requirement but isn't anymore," said Reyes.

"And yet you do speak English."

"Yes," Reyes admitted.

"And we have something in common," said Ushzhur.

"What would that be?"

"I am guessing that English is not your native language anymore than it is mine."

"But my native language is much closer to English than yours is," said Reyes.

"No doubt," said Ushzhur. "Well, enough small talk, yes? Let us get down to business." Ushzhur said the word "down" with an odd emphasis that made his voice rattle. It was as though he were marveling at the odd colloquialism. Why "down" and not "up" or some other metaphor? Reyes had long ago contemplated the same thing but had also long ago forgotten about it.

"We have no business."

"Oh, I beg to differ, Piri. We are going to have a fascinating conversation about codes and passwords. By the way, your mother ship? The Washington? We have it. Intact. And while we do not have its transponder codes, we have some of them from your craft, and while we have no survivors from your ship, we do have you, which is second best, yes?"

"I have nothing to tell you."

"Oh, don't be so modest, Piri. Besides, you must know we will probe until we locate the codes in your head." Ushzhur turned away and waved the longish fingers of both his right hands over a white shelf that Reyes had not noticed before. There were objects of various lengths and colors on the shelf. Everything else in this room—perhaps everything else on this ship—was white and blended into the white background. Even the close-fitting robe that Ushzhur wore was white, while his exoskeleton was light green.

"Here," said Ushzhur, turning back with a short, narrow metallic cylinder in one hand. "We have adulterated this for your human constitution. It seems you need less of it than we do. You seem to need less of everything."

"Except oxygen."

"Oh, of course," said Ushzhur. He applied the cylinder to Reyes's neck and, with a whoosh, the drug went to Reyes' head. "I will leave you to become acquainted with this new friend, and I'll turn up the oxygen level so you will be able to think. We want you to think very well so you will not forget the codes." Reyes thought he felt Ushzhur move away, and he welcomed the silence after all of his squeaking and rattling. The respite was not long lived.

"Here you go," said Ushzhur. Reyes was drifting. He fought to keep his wits but found himself walking down a path in Geneva, Switzerland where he had been a schoolboy. He tried to keep in mind where he actually was, so as to maintain the advantage he now knew that he had, but the illusion that he was a boy again was very seductive. He wanted to go home to his mother, but he had to fight that impulse. The sun told him that it was late afternoon, and, although young Piri would ordinarily have gone home, he instead turned and went back to school.

In his classroom, he saw a woman with dark skin and long, straight black hair. She was graceful and had the most beautiful facial features he would ever see, although as a boy he did not know that yet. He only knew that she was extraordinarily pretty, but that she was much older and more intelligent than he was. He was intimidated by her and much too young to have more than a hopeless crush. Yet she was the first woman after his mother who had made a strong impression on him. She had been an ally and a counselor whenever he had a problem neither his mother nor one of his classmates could solve.

She turned from the whiteboard now and saw him hanging back in the doorway. "Piri," she said, "what a surprise to see you awake in my classroom."

"Good evening, Ma Thakar," he stammered.

"Oh, well, it isn't quite evening yet, but to what do I owe your gracious visit?"

Piri felt bashful and did not know what to say. Ma Thakar seemed to sense his discomfort and walked to a student's chair in the front row where she sat down even though the chair was too small and low for her. "Come, Piri, sit beside me, and we will have a pleasant talk. I promise you." Slowly, Piri approached and sat down two chairs away. "Come, come, Piri, you can sit closer than that. I won't bite." Piri did take the chair right next to hers, but he sat facing away from her while she turned so as to look at him directly. "That's better," she said. "Now, is something bothering you, Piri?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Well, I think there is." She looked at him and smiled warmly, encouragingly.

"I have a problem that no one can help me with," he said at last.

"I doubt that. I'm very good at helping to solve problems. I'm a teacher, after all. That's what we teachers do, isn't it?"

"I have to hide something," Piri said. "You have to hide it, and you can't ask me what it is or why, but a great deal depends on it."

"My, this sounds important."

"It is. The fate of everyone on Earth could depend on whether this thing can be concealed from the wrong people."

"What a lot of responsibility for a young boy," she said. "But you can trust me. I'll keep it safe, whatever it is."

"I knew I could trust you," he said. He reached into his pocket and drew out his pen knife and an apple and a piece of twine. He then pulled out a piece of silvery paper, like a gum wrapper, and was about to hand it to her when he suddenly saw a praying mantis next to his apple on the teacher's desk. It was using two of its arms to peel the apple with the pen knife, while tying knots in the twine with its other two hands. He looked back at Ma Thakar's reaching arm in time to see it turn into a green claw-like hand. With a shout, Piri snatched the piece of paper back. "You are not Ma Thakar!" Piri cried.

"Well, I thought that was too easy," said Ushzhur, who now sat in the little student's chair beside Piri. He looked very odd with his head and arms poking out of Ma Thakar's sari, and under the sari her ample breasts still pushed forward. "But don't worry," Ushzhur said. "I'll get that code next time," his throat rattling as he pronounced the word "time."


	3. Chapter 3

Piri jumped up and ran from the classroom. He tried to think of some other place or someone else he could go to. He looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Ma Thakar or Ushzhur coming after him in the hallway outside the classroom, but, instead, what he saw was the ocean. The Pacific Ocean. He was standing on top of a rugged cliff in Northern California. He could hear the ocean and smell it. There were dark clouds rapidly moving in from far out on the horizon. Rain. A downpour in a matter of minutes, he thought.

Northern California was one of the places where he had trained to fly, and he loved the stark, almost savage beauty of the coast. Here is where he had known someone else, too.

"Piri," a sweet voice said. There was a lilt to it that he had never forgotten.

"Mariel," he said even before he finished turning to see her. "A storm comes in off the ocean. We should find shelter."

Mariel smiled. She was petit and had chestnut hair and dark brown eyes. "It would be more natural to say, 'A storm is coming in off the ocean.'"

"Of course," said Piri. "Spoken like a true English major." She smiled at him and he smiled back. "We still have to find shelter."

"Well, then," she said, "I'll take the picnic basket, and you roll up the blanket, and we'll sit under that ledge we both like."

He handed her the basket and then gathered up the blanket and folded it loosely. "Let's go."

Mariel took his hand and they loped across the top of the cliff until they reached an overhang beneath which was a very shallow cave.

"I'm not sure this will keep us dry," said Piri. "There is going to be wind so that the rain will come in sideways."

"Getting a little wet never bothered you before," she said. She smiled and he remembered how much he loved her.

"Let's get under there. We can wrap ourselves with the blanket."

"Why, Mr. Reyes," she said coquettishly. "I believe you are trying to get me under the covers."

"Well, Miss Duenas, it is going to be cold and we shall need to cuddle for warmth."

"Ah, cuddling is what he is after. Is that all?"

They got under the ledge and wrapped themselves tightly in the blanket. Their shoulders rubbed together and they held hands. The rain came almost immediately, and, just as Piri had predicted, it whipped in at them sideways. They turned their faces toward each other and both of them laughed.

After fifteen minutes, just as suddenly as it had begun, the storm moved away and left them wet and shivering.

"Now what?" asked Mariel. "You seem preoccupied today."

"I have a favor to ask of you," he said.

"Anything," she said.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thumb-drive. "I want you to keep something for me."

"What is it?"

"It is just something I want kept safe."

"I can do that," she said. Her smile was as infectious as ever, but he had to remain serious.

"No one can be allowed to see this device," he told her. "Not even me. Do not give it back to me even though I ask for it."

"O.k., I promise." She took it and immediately plugged it into an ancient laptop.

"Wait," he said. "Don't look at it! No one must know the content of that device!"

Mariel ignored him and continued to read the computer screen. The mantis on the rock next to them said, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"You!" said Piri, taking a swipe at the mantis who bounced out of the way and onto the ground.

"That will take us as far as Mars," said Ushzhur still in the form of a diminutive mantis. "We still need the password so we can get through to Mars and blast the central command that controls the defense network. We both know that you will give that to us, one way or another."

"No. No more games. I will not go anywhere else."

"We could both stay here," said the mantis. He drew the penknife from thin air. It seemed as large as a sword in his hands. "I could begin by skewering you girlfriend here. How would you like that?"

Reyes walked purposefully to Mariel and picked her up like a groom about to carry his bride across the threshold. Mariel laughed and squealed as she dropped the laptop in the grass. She continued to laugh as Reyes carried her to the edge of the cliff.

"Piri! What are you doing? Put me down!" she cried without ceasing to laugh.

He dropped her over the cliff's edge, onto the rocks below. She never made a sound all the way down.

Turning around to face the mantis, he saw Ushzhur rise to his full stature, wearing his white robe. "She wasn't real," said Reyes.

"You hope," said Ushzhur.

"I know," said Reyes, "and you are not going to get another thing out of me."

"Maybe not this way," said Ushzhur.

Reyes looked down at himself, and saw that he was strapped to the white pallet once again. Ushzhur stood beside him. Next to Ushzhur was the white shelf that nearly disappeared against the white room. On it various instruments were neatly arranged. At first glance, they looked like medical devices, but, on second look, they included devices such as needle-nose pliers, small circular saws and drills. "You must be a whiz at do-it-yourself home repairs," said Reyes.

"I gather that is what humans call a sense of humor," Ushzhur said. He picked up the drill and it whirred automatically. "You will find that I do not have one of those."


	4. Chapter 4

Chief Science Officer Ushzhur stood confidently on the bridge of the enhanced and refitted Carrier Washington. He and Captain Tsumvyr, stood side by side monitoring, on a large screen, their progress through a field of interplanetary debris at the outer reaches of Earth's solar system. Around the two officers, a crew of their fellow Gourvyn bustled about the bridge, navigating the carrier as if they had been doing it their entire careers. Gourvyn can learn anything, Ushzhur reflected. This ship's systems? Easily done. The human language called English? That had been easy to learn, too, even though it had taken a little while for Ushzhur to figure out that those "I Love Lucy" episodes were not meant to be taken as educational films about human family life, and that those twittering noises that came in waves after every few utterances by the principal figures on the program actually marked what humans call "jokes."

Reyes had tried to make jokes even as Ushzhur had removed parts of him for more than an hour, but, in the end, Reyes was no longer joking, and he gave Ushzhur the verbal password, which was really a passphrase—"Steamboat Calling Monica." At that point, Ushzhur had gone deep inside Reyes' mind, and, in his weakened state, the human had no will to deny that this was the correct passphrase.

On the gurney, nearby, was Reyes, or what was left of him. Ushzhur had not killed him because he wanted him available in case the Gourvyn needed to learn something else from him. Reyes was thoroughly drugged so that he could not feel the pain caused by what had been taken from him. This was as much to keep him quiet so that he did not distract the other Gourvyn, as it was to comfort him, but Ushzhur felt no desire to cause Reyes further pain. He was always grateful for the challenge of probing an alien mind and extracting information. Perhaps he would get to do more of it once they had conquered this new solar system. He was, after all, the closest thing the Gourvyn had to an expert on this species.

The carrier now exchanged pings with the Solar System Defense Network's outermost force field. Like a key in a lock, the first set of numeric codes let them enter and begin their descent into the solar system. Tsumvyr nodded, pleased. An hour later they gave the next set of numbers, and after that they gave the third. They were going so slowly because they had deliberately kept the Washington's propulsion system. The Gourvyn ships could leap from pinpoint to distant pinpoint in seconds even in fields crowded with debris, but that advanced maneuverability would have made the humans justifiably suspicious. So, instead, the Washington trudged on for another hour. Then it gave the fourth set of codes, the ones they had obtained from Reyes.

Now came the moment of truth. Before opening communications, Tsumvyr looked at another officer who prepared to power up the new plasma cannon. The Washington had been fitted with the most advanced cannon in the Gourvyn arsenal. Its targeting sensors were its secret weapon within a weapon. It could target any chemical, biological or electronic signature the operator chose. In this case, they wanted to target the central command that ran the SSDN, and they found it, as expected, on the planet called Mars. Their weapon would destroy about an eighth of that planet and would, more importantly, cause the collapse of the entire defense network. Then the rest of their fleet would descend on the inner planets within thirty seconds and ravage the home planet, Earth.

Tsumvyr turned to look at Ushzhur, who nodded. It was his turn. A hailing frequency squawked and Ushzhur stepped forward and spoke into the transmitter. "Steamboat calling Monica," he said, carefully controlling his voice so that there would be no rattles or squeaks. It was a nonsense phrase, of course, but he knew that all good code words are. Still, he was curious as to how someone had come up with such a phrase.

An instant later, the visual screens picked up five nuclear missiles streaking toward the Washington at top speed. Another hail came in, and this time there was a visual on the screen.

The image of what Ushzhur knew was a member of the Far East Asian variety of human appeared on the screen. The Gourvyn could see him, but he could not see them. His brow looked stern as he spoke commandingly. "Identigi vin mem aŭ estos detruita," he said.

Tsumvyr turned and looked reproachfully at Ushzhur, who in turn rushed to Reyes' side. The groggy human opened his eyes and smiled broadly.

"You treacherous human!" Ushzhur screeched and rattled. "You have killed us all!"

"I did hint that your information was out of date," laughed Reyes. "Neniu plu parolas la anglan."

"I understand those words," said Ushzhur. "'Anglan' is 'English'; 'parolas' is 'talk' or 'speak', isn't it? I don't quite get 'neniu', but it's a negation. Wait, you are saying that nobody speaks English on Earth anymore. But I know you gave me the correct passphrase."

"I did," said Piri, "but you never asked if I gave it to you in the correct language. You assumed it would be in English."

"But if English is a dead language, why did you ever learn it?"

"You saw Ma Thakar and Mariel, but I suppose you would have to be human to understand why I would want to learn any language they spoke."

Tsumvyr rattled and screeched loudly, and Ushzhur turned toward him, rattling and screeching in reply while gesticulating toward Reyes with both of his right arms.

In the next moment, the Washington became an inferno, and everyone on the bridge was vaporized. The constituent particles of the late vessel, which had been built by one species and modified by another, drifted outward from the center of the blast, its radiation to be contained and herded harmlessly into the sun by drone craft over the next several days.

The SSDN was now on high alert. No other craft would be allowed to enter the system without extraordinary scrutiny. An armada hovering on the outer edge of the solar system would soon be detected and measures taken against it, until it slunk away in defeat—for the time being.

END

In memory of Lt. (later Capt.) Leon Woodie Spears (1924-2008), who only gave them his name, rank and serial number and lived to tell of it.


End file.
